It's nothing to do with sniping. Not correctly describing the contents of any auction is a pain for prospective buyers and you shouldn't have to jump through hoops ex trademe to get the info you require. Non the less it does have the desired effect. Criptic, over dramatic answers are just plain tiring as well.

Indeed, in terms of sniping cover, trademe's auto-extend tends to nullify any element of surprise. The main thing you get by being discreet on trademe is to not unnecessarily push up the price before the end.

caluser2000 wrote:Criptic, over dramatic answers are just plain tiring as well.

oh god yes... although I tend to exercise a certain amount of sarcasm myself sometimes if the person hasn't (a) read the auction or is (b) asking for inappropriate amounts of detail on a self evident $1 listing.

Gibsaw wrote:in terms of sniping cover, trademe's auto-extend tends to nullify any element of surprise. The main thing you get by being discreet on trademe is to not unnecessarily push up the price before the end.

definitely drop a bid on-sight to lock out "pickers", but auto bidding only ends up pushing the price up as I have learnt the hard way

its super frustrating to have your eye on a complete setup only to see the next day the best bit has been picked and listing reads "this bit has now been sold"

haven't struck that yet, myself ... but I drop a bid on bargain reserves to avoid the silly situation where I forget about it at close time, no-one else bids again and I miss getting it for a bargain. (This most definitely has happened to me a few times.)

Speaking of VZ200 it is noticably absent from Terry's collection ? (I thought they had a niche market in NZ/AU/DE)was just looking at the collection website, very nice range I especially like the colour genie, TI99 and Aquarius

I find auto bidding useful. I know what price I'm actually prepared to pay, so set that up. If it goes higher well and good for the person who obviously needs/wants it more than I do. That's part n parcel of auctioning. Be prepared to pay up or don't bother entering the action. There's the occasional exception obviously when I'll add a bit more, but not often.

Caviar is over rated. And a good malt is certainly a lot better than piss water. Do those that pay those stupid prices actually play with them or do they just go into storage hoping their "investment" will increase in value or are they placed in a glass cage? In saying that I quite understand the likes of museums aquiring stuff to put on display as well as various institutions want to do historical data recovery/conversion.

Oh and generally a good idea to avoid auctions that have that "r" word in it. It's just asking to be had

I know one of the high rollers is about to retire and wants to restore vintage computers when he does.

There was suspicions of one trader (not from here) who was suspected of exporting items at a profit, but I think most the bidders are collectors or enthusiasts. You kind of need to be, two of my machines failed in the last few weeks, one repaired one in repair - if I'd have left that for ten years diagnosis would be harder because more components would've perished.